


An Anatomy of the Human Heart

by spycandy



Series: Coeurville [1]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Books, F/M, Helpful booksellers, Helpful captains, Swedish spies, Very Minor Character Death, bookshops, mild illness-related peril, unspecific fever is unspecific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:21:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spycandy/pseuds/spycandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a kinkmeme prompt asking for slow, quiet post series 1 Athos/Ninon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ah, what a trifle is a heart

His first thought was that the book was intended as some kind of threat. If so, it was both a subtle and an expensive one -- the pocket-sized volume was new and was printed on good quality paper in two ink colours, so that the blood flowed bright red through the thick-lined block-printed diagrams detailing what the title described as _An Anatomy of the Human Heart_.

There were no forget-me-nots pressed between the pages and it didn’t seem like _her_ style anyway. But who else would send him such a strange thing anonymously? The parcel had made the final stage of its voyage by urchin, who dropped it at the garrison gate and fled without even waiting for a tip, so there was no clue there.

After puzzling over it alone for the best part of a night and a day, Athos dropped the book onto the tavern table in front of his friends. Aramis picked it up and leafed through the pages.

“Not exactly your usual choice in bedtime reading my friend,” he said after a few moments, holding it open at one of the more red and gory diagrams for the others to grimace over.

“It was delivered to me yesterday at the garrison with no note from the sender. Do you think it’s intended as some kind of message?”

“Perhaps someone wanted to remind you that you have one -- a heart that is,” suggested Porthos. Athos glared. Yes he’d spent years trying to hide it, but surely his friends had seen a little too much of his battered heart of late to mock it so. “Not any of us obviously! I only meant...”

“A secret admirer maybe?” said D’Artagnan, conveniently saving Porthos from having to explain. “Don’t sweethearts sometimes send paper hearts?”

“It’s a fairly gruesome kind of paper heart,” said Athos.

“This from the man who when invited by a woman to dine, took her for a pleasant jaunt to the morgue,” teased Aramis, glancing back up from the pages of the book.

 _Oh_ , thought Athos. _Of course_.

As the others began a game of naming the least romantic places in Paris, he sat back and indulged the thought of Ninon in her far distant school, remembering him in some small fashion. And his heart felt an awful lot lighter than the book claimed that it should weigh.

**  
Over the next two weeks he read the book from cover to cover so often that he had memorised practically every word. The knowledge within could hardly be all that useful to him -- as a soldier all that he really needed was to know of the heart was its location when running a man through. 

But, he told himself, perhaps he could work out what message was intended. That did not explain why, when he was not reading it, he kept it inside his jacket, pressed up against his real heart. But no one had to know that.

“You should try taking it to Alain Brunet,” suggested Aramis eventually. Apparently his continued obsession with the small book had not gone entirely unnoticed. “Best bookseller this side of the river.”

“I don’t plan to sell it.”

“No, I can see that. But Alain knows books. Maybe he can tell you where it was printed.”

Later that same day, Athos found himself in the dark, cosy bookshop, browsing baffling works of philosophy while Alain studied the book through a large magnifying glass.

“I’m afraid it’s not rare,” said Alain. “It was published about three years ago in Orleans. I’ve sold quite a few copies myself, but this one wasn’t bought here. See, I stamp each book with the sign of the shop on the front end paper.”

Athos sighed. It was a dead end and it seemed that the book had been sent with no intention that he should ever be able to reply to the sender.

**

The second book-sized parcel was waiting for him when he arrived at the garrison the next morning. The chance to question its deliverer was long gone and Athos berated the inobservant men in the yard who could only offer the most vague and useless description of the scruffy youth who had dropped it off.

Once again the cloth wrapping offered no clues as to its origin. The book inside was larger than its predecessor, but still slim. The title, tooled on its leather binding was, _The Loire: from source to sea_.

A river? Whatever his friends’ fanciful theories that the anatomy text was a scientist’s _billet-doux_ , he could see no similar connotation in a geographic study. What, then was its meaning? Was it not from Ninon after all?

The thought was disappointing, he found. He had hardly spent the fortnight imagining the gift leading to happy-ever-after, but it had been a comfortable thought that, wherever she was, she thought of him at all. 

Still, _someone_ was sending him books. Sitting on the table in the sunshine he opened the river guide to its first page and there, in smudged blue ink, was a bookseller’s mark.

He ran much of the way to Alain’s shop.

“Yes, I know the mark,” said the bookseller. “The shop is in Blois I believe, which makes sense for a book on the Loire. And the last book was from Orleans. So, we begin to narrow your search.”

“To what, the entire Loire Valley?” To hell with it, he would never find her and the books were a cruel taunt. Was it too early for a drink?

“But I wonder… The heart and now the Loire. Wait there.” Alain shuffled off into the back of the shop, returning a few moments later carrying an enormous Atlas. He laid it open on the floor and crouched down beside it.

“Don’t touch!” he scolded preemptively. “This is worth about a year of musketeer pay. Right, here’s the river. And… yes, I thought I’d seen the name somewhere. Coeurville sur Loire. Does that mean anything to you?”

***

“I wondered, sir, if I might take a few days leave.”

Men did that, he knew. They went to the countryside to visit elderly parents or spent a year’s savings indulging in the pleasures of Paris. He just hadn’t, ever. If he was fit, he served.

“You’re owed more than a few days Athos,” said Captain Treville with a wry smile, “And now’s a good time, we’re up to full strength, no one sick or injured for once.”

“I just need enough time to ride to a place near Blois.” He hesitated, aware that the next request would seem odd. “And would it be possible to not tell the others, sir? I’ve some personal business to conclude and, well, they will pry.”

“Only because they care, you know that,” said Treville. “But if you like, there are some despatches to be delivered. They don’t really need such a prestigious courier, but it’s not too far out of your way and as far as anyone else need know, you’re running an errand for me.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Ride safely Athos. And whatever it is you need to do there, I hope it goes well.”

***

“Is there a school in this town?” he asked the first people he encountered, a young couple, strolling arm in arm.

“Oh, you must mean Mademoiselle Roitelet’s new place. Yes, turn left at the end of the main street, it’s a grey stone building, you’ll see it.”

Roitelet. _Wren_. With his hopes so nearly confirmed it took all his courage not to flee back to Paris. Why not let it remain a lovely dream about a woman he barely knew. A woman who barely knew him. To actually find her would only give him the chance to ruin it all.

But she had, albeit cryptically, invited him to come. Hadn’t she? She must want to see him. Why else send the books? Such were the thoughts that occupied Athos as he turned left into the Rue St Jospeh and saw the sturdy grey schoolhouse. From the exterior, it appeared to have two classrooms, with a small cottage attached. The shutters on the school were freshly painted and the door was open to the street, in what must be intended as a gesture of welcome to any young person who wanted to learn.

He approached from an angle at which he was unlikely to be observed by those inside and stood to one side of the doorway, listening.

It was her. Her cultured voice was explaining simple measurements, the kind of calculations useful to farmers and merchants, although she couldn’t resist occasional digressions into deeper scientific concepts. Her class didn’t seem to mind and neither did Athos -- indeed so rapt was he that he failed to notice when the sun peeped from behind a cloud and cast his dark shadow across the doorway.

“Show yourself monsieur. You need not hide in shadows to learn mathematics with us. All are welcome here, adults as well as children.”

“Mademoiselle,” he said, bowing as he crossed the threshold, heart pounding in his chest.

“Ah,” said Ninon. The only sign of surprise was in her eyes, which sparkled just as brightly as he remembered. “Please take a seat at the back with the older scholars.”

There were two women at the back of the room, old enough to be grandmothers to the children at the front. As Ninon resumed her lesson, the nearer of the pair nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. “You should know she’s spurned every suitor in town already,” she whispered. “We _knew_ she must have a long lost lover somewhere.” 

Athos spluttered.

“Silence at the back there,” scolded Ninon, and the children at the front giggled.


	2. O cheer and tune my heartless breast

The old women hung back after the children left for the day.

“Is he welcome?” asked the sharp-elbowed one. “We can see him off if you like.”

Athos didn’t doubt that they could.

“No, thank you Marie. He’s very welcome indeed,” said Ninon, smiling and blushing ever so slightly. Even in a plain grey dress and with chalk dust in her hair, she looked glorious.

Marie and her friend hobbled off along the street, chuckling.

“I am? Welcome, that is?”

“Yes, though I must admit I underestimated you dreadfully. I had two more clues ready to send before I had any hopes of seeing you.”

“Then I must confess in turn that I would not have been so quick without the help of Brunet and his Atlas. And I might have been driven quite mad if the puzzle went on much longer.”

“Dear Alain! How I miss having the booksellers of Paris so close at hand,” said Ninon, but her wistfulness was clearly playful.

“What else do you miss?” he asked.

“Oh, music. The handful of musicians in town are no match for those at court and the church choir here is both over-ambitious and truly _terrible_. Come on,” she said slipping her arm through his to lead the way. “Let’s get out of the schoolroom and walk by the river.”

It did not seem possible, given the disparity of dress and footwear between them, but they fell into stride together as naturally as if he was walking with Porthos or Aramis. The riverside path was deliciously pretty in the late afternoon sunshine, but apart from some rabbits nibbling at the grass, they had it all to themselves.

“And I have missed kissing the handsome musketeer who saved my life,” said Ninon.

“Well,” said Athos. “I have brought no booksellers with me and I am rated a woefully poor musician, but…”

It was different from their previous kisses, laced as it was with undertones of laughter rather than longing in the midst of tragedy. The anatomy book had suggested it was not possible for a heart to burst from sheer happiness, but Athos thought for a moment that he might expire right there on the riverside, in a manner interesting to science.

**

Back at the schoolhouse cottage, they put together a hotchpotch supper of things brought for Mademoiselle by the school’s students -- cold roast chicken, fresh peas, soft bread. Ninon laid the small table for two with such care and correctness that Athos was sharply reminded that for all that she might decry convention in many things, she had not cast off nobility deliberately, as he had.

Still he knew the proper form well enough that as they sat down together and picked up the correct cutlery, it felt for a moment as if they really were comte and comtesse surrounded by expensive plate and grand candelabra. It sent a shudder right through him.

“What other subjects do you teach, besides mathematics?” he asked, reaching for a topic that would pull him back to the here and now. To musketeer and schoolteacher.

“I teach the little ones to read and write. Some natural philosophy for the older students. French history for everyone. There’s an artist who comes in once a week to teach drawing - some of the older girls from the town are only allowed to come for that. It isn’t my Paris salon, but at least the conversation is lively. Marie and Clotilde are a blessing, they say they waited their whole lives for someone to teach them anything, but they know everything about this town.”

“No Classics?”

“These people don’t have much use for Latin poetry,” she said.

He shook his head. “Never mind poetry -- surely every schoolboy wants to read Caesar’s battles.”

Ninon laughed. “And for a moment there I feared you might secretly be a poetic soul.”

“Just a soldier, I’m afraid. Musketeer, heart and soul.”

“Well then, tomorrow morning, before you have to leave, you can teach the invasion of Britannia to my students. They’ll love that, both the boys and the girls.”

He didn’t want to think about leaving.

***

With the supper things cleared away, Ninon led him by the hand into her bedroom and he panicked. He wasn’t ready for this. There was too much that still had to be said, had to be explained before he could allow himself this. And once it was said, it would all be over anyway.

“I must… We should… It’s not…” he tried.

“Athos?” Her voice was gentle, concerned. “If you’re concerned for my reputation, do remember that I was officially executed as a traitor and a heretic. I don’t think it actually can sink any lower than that.”

He stared out of the window, unable to watch her face once she knew.

“I told you once, I had been married. For a long time, I thought my wife dead, but then she returned. She really was a traitor, involved in a plot against the queen’s life. I don’t know where she is now. Not in France I think. But she lives, somewhere.” There, it was said. Or at least enough of it was said that she could now throw him out into the night. 

“My changed status has not altered my views on marriage Athos. I care very little whether you are legally free, only whether your heart is.”

“My heart is not hers,” he said. “I am not certain whether it is whole enough or pure enough to give to anyone else, but a small book tells me that as long as it beats, life endures.”

“Then come to my bed and let me see just how quickly I can make it beat.”

***

Later, much later, she lay sleeping in his arms and Athos drowsily admired the curve of her neck and shoulder in the moonlight. She was remarkable. She made love the same way she lived, with both certainty and generosity, giving pleasure and enjoying it without shame. 

He could feel the beat of her heart, steady against his chest, echoing his own as he followed her into sleep.


	3. Heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little darker than I expected, but I hope it's not going too far off prompt. Warning, some grim soldiering stuff happens in the day job for Athos.

“How about botany?” suggested Alain, pulling yet another book from his shop shelves. “Something from the New World. She sent you disturbingly accurate heart diagrams, you could send her exotic flowers in return.”

“You are a genius Alain, I’ll take it.”

After teaching his history lesson to a class of eager youngsters, a more nerve-wracking experience than actually fighting in a battle in his personal view, Athos had departed from Coeurville to deliver Treville’s despatches. He and Ninon had made each other no promises, but she had gripped his hands between hers and told him he would be welcome to come and visit again whenever he could. And he planned to, although he had no idea when he would actually be able to do so. 

In the meantime, he had decided on the journey back, he could send her books. There was one small shelf of books in the cottage and only a few more in the schoolroom. He had called in at the shop even before returning to the garrison.

The bookseller still didn’t know who ‘she’ was of course - to share the information was too much of a risk - but Alain appeared to have an instinctive understanding of readers in general.

“Alain, have you any idea what became of the books from the library of the Comtesse de Larroque?”

“The really valuable ones disappeared to the palace, but a quite lot were sold off. I don’t have any here, but I can ask around if you’re interested. Or if your friend would be? She was one of the young ladies who attended the salon, yes? Family packed her off to the Loire after the scandal?”

Athos was grateful to Alain for filling in his own version of the truth. It would suffice.

“Just… let me know if any can be bought. I know of a school that would like them.”

***

If Alain’s instinct for understanding readers was remarkable, Aramis’s instinct regarding lovers was downright disturbing.

“There’s something different…” mused the musketeer, head cocked to one side, studying Athos from head to toe, the very moment he strode back into the yard after stabling his horse. “Dear God, it was about time!”

Athos, rolled his eyes, neither confirming, nor denying the implicit suggestion. Did it really show - on his face? In his posture? Was there an obvious bounce in his step? As he sprang up the steps to Treville’s office, taking them two at a time, he suspected there might be.

“I’ll round up the others,” Aramis called after him. “We must go to the tavern to celebrate, your… ah, your safe return!”

*** 

The days and weeks went by much as they used to do, with endless hours of guard duty, enlivened by the occasional inept criminal plot. They unmasked a Swedish spy, but he was an eleven year old page boy who wept piteously until the king took him off to look at model boats and thus won him over to be the loyalest citizen France would ever have. If only grown up diplomacy was so easy.

Athos's bar bill was smaller, his sword work felt quicker, the streets of Paris seemed notably cheerier. His heart ached a little for those of his friends crossed in love - d’Artagnan still gazed with hopeless longing on the Bonacieux house every time they passed and Aramis carefully didn’t gaze with longing on the queen whenever they were on guard at court. But on the whole it was surprising how much better a place the entire world seemed to be, simply for knowing there was a schoolhouse cottage out there in it, where he would always be welcome.

Another parcel arrived, which he opened to discover a tiny bound volume of _De Bello Africo_. His abrupt bark of laughter made each of his friends fix him with a look of astonishment, but they were all delighted to learn that the mystery book delivery service had moved on to classics of military history.

***

He should have known better than to expect it to last. 

Not every threat could turn out to be a harmless child and the religious fanatics who launched an attack on the palace gardens during the royal picnic were certainly a lot more dangerous. All around him, musketeers ran to surround and shield the royal party from harm.

“Athos, go after them!” shouted Treville across the chaos. 

Athos could see the group’s leaders sprinting away across the green lawns. With a quick glance he identified two young soldiers who were not immediately protecting any of the civilians huddled on the ground.

“Jacques, Victor, with me!” he shouted and both followed. Jacques, perhaps the fastest runner in the whole regiment, easily overtook him and was soon the only one of the pursuers actually gaining on the escaping assassins. Or he was, right up to the moment when one of them span around and fired a single musket shot. Athos saw Jacques fold in two and hit the ground hard.

He was still alive when Athos reached him seconds later, but he could not long survive the gaping wound in his belly. For a moment Athos was torn between stopping and running on after the killers, but he knew they already had the speed advantage, and he suspected they had co-conspirators with horses just beyond the next hedgerow. And it would be cowardice to let the young man die alone.

“Jacques,” he said, kneeling beside the young man. “Look at me.”

***

Porthos had to practically carry him home from the tavern that night, but he hadn’t been able to drink away the look in the young musketeer’s eyes as he died - the pain, the fear, the gratitude as Athos muttered the appropriate prayers and then told him he was a brave and true musketeer. And the way that look suddenly faded to blankness.

“You’ve lost plenty of men on missions before Athos,” said Porthos, as he pulled off his friend’s boots. “You don’t usually take it so hard.”

It was true. He’d barely known Jacques, other than as a quick-footed young recruit who needed to work on his shooting. Was this then the risk of opening his heart to a little happiness? Had he simply cleared the way to feel everything else he had hardened himself against for so long?

He curled up on the bed with a groan and Porthos patted him on a shoulder and left him to his misery.

***

“Sir,” said Aramis, in Treville’s office a week later. “We need to do something. I don’t think he’s ever been this bad. He’s barely here.”

“He’s right there in the yard,” said Treville, but he knew what the worried trio in front of him meant. Since the attack at the palace, Athos had been more silent, more detached than ever.

Treville knew all too well that losses in the field could hit you unexpectedly hard. Even after years of service, even after dozens, maybe hundreds, of deaths, one casualty would sneak past your mental defences and remind you that each was a young man with hopes and dreams. 

But he had hoped that, since whatever business took him to Blois, Athos had finally started to put that whole messy business with his wife behind him, and to enjoy the present. He’d even seen him smile more than once in a single day. It was frustrating to see him take such a set back.

“We thought that maybe… When you sent him on that solo mission a couple of months ago? There was something? Someone?”

He wouldn’t betray Athos’s secrets, but it did give him an idea. “All right, I’ll see what I can do. Tell him to come up and see me.”

***

Get out of Paris, deliver these messages, sort your head out. Those had been Treville’s orders, with a pointed emphasis on not needing to be back for six days, considerably more than the ride to Orleans required.

“It’s not meant to be a punishment,” the captain had added, when Athos glowered at the temporary exile. “And you should stop punishing yourself for what happened. Take happiness where and when you find it man, because we both know death can find you suddenly.”

So he found himself riding back into Coeurville, sooner than he had ever thought possible. It was after school hours, so the schoolhouse door was closed and he knocked at the cottage instead. Ninon opened the door and her face immediately brightened when she saw him there.

But when he tried to speak, all that came out was a sob.

***

“I’m so very sorry about earlier,” he said, an hour or so later as he sat shirtless on her kitchen chair, while she smoothed out the muscles of his shoulders, knotted and tense after the long day of riding. “When you said you found my melancholy aspect attractive, I very much doubt you meant ‘why not ride halfway across the country to weep on me?’”.

She laughed and swatted at him teasingly. “Athos, a man died from horrible injuries right in front of you. I know that happens to soldiers more often than it ever does to the rest of us, but I think you’re more than entitled to find it upsetting.”

He gave a small moan of agreement, more with her fingers and thumb than with the sentiment, but something in his heart seemed to have come unknotted as well.

“Now, has Treville really told you not to be back for days? Because I can declare a school holiday tomorrow and have you all to myself - unless you’d rather give another history lesson.”


	4. And what my heart desir'd, mine eyes had seen

When he opened his eyes for the second time that morning, Athos found Ninon leaning against the pillows with an open book in one hand and the other gently teasing his hair. The book, he was pleased to discover, was being ignored in favour of gazing fondly in his direction.

“Mmm,” he said, returning the look with equal warmth.

He suspected he’d already learned more that morning than he’d ever learned in a schoolhouse before - though in fairness, his own childhood education had been mainly at the hands of a string of tutors. Nevertheless, he had not expected to find himself quite so much in ignorance when it came to women. His youthful fumblings and his marriage had introduced him to several variations on the same pleasurable act - but it turned out there were far more things that could be done with the addition of tongues and lips and fingers than he had ever imagined possible.

He wondered whether anyone had thought to write a book on it, so that he could read up on the subject, but he couldn’t imagine ever finding the words to ask Alain.

Pushing himself up onto his forearms he planted a light kiss on Ninon’s forehead - far more chaste than anything they had been doing earlier, but if they started _that_ again, they’d never get any breakfast this morning - or was it afternoon already?

“Are you truly feeling better today?” asked Ninon, forehead creased in concern, and for a moment he couldn’t even work out what she meant. The darkness that had swallowed him whole for days on end had been chased away so completely. 

Of course, he couldn’t resist poking at the wound, but it seemed that while calling to mind poor young Jacques bleeding out on the royal lawn might squeeze his heart with momentary sadness, it was no longer the edge of an abyss. His mind no longer stuttered to a halt at the thought - the world was still a place worth living in. Well worth living in.

“Truly,” he said, shaking his head in wonder at it.

***

They strolled through the town with Ninon pointing out all of the features of historic and artistic interest. There weren’t many.

“I’m sorry,” she laughed. “The court house really is the only building in Coeurville of any architectural merit whatsoever. The town hall is an unimaginative block and both churches are drab things that no one with any taste would look twice at in Paris.”

“Mademoiselle Roitelet!” said Athos. “For all your talk of equality, I see you remain a terrible intellectual snob.”

“I believe the people should have access to greatness - in architecture, in art, in music," she said airily. "Why should such things only be available to the nobility?”

“I think many would settle for plain buildings and mediocre art if they could have access to food and shelter.” But perhaps they shouldn’t argue about politics in the public street. “Local musicians still terrible then?”

She sighed. “Dreadful. If I could just find one youngster with a decent ear to encourage…”

As they turned off the main street, heading towards the riverside path, Athos began to whistle a new air popular in Paris for the past month. He kept it up for several minutes, until he was starting to feel dizzy from not breathing in enough, being hopelessly out of practice in the art. 

But Ninon applauded and cheered his effort. “Bravo! I thought you said you were rated a poor musician.”

“Oh dear,” he said. “If that sounded good, Coeurville standards really must be bad.”

***

The evening was warm enough to sit outside for a while in the small schoolhouse garden, sipping pleasant wine. Athos suspected it was the company rather than the quality of the wine or the slow paced drinking that made for the comfortable hum in his head.

However Ninon’s insistence that he would have to teach history again in the morning almost made him down his glass whole.

***

“Now, who remembers what the Roman legionaries’ swords were called?”

Around the school room, several hands shot up and Athos pointed at a fair-haired boy on the second row. 

“Gladius, sir!”

It was almost as pleasing as seeing a recruit use a parry he had taught, when fighting in earnest. Although weeks had passed since his first foray into school teaching, the class had remembered almost everything - and the more bloodthirsty the details, the better their recall. So as he launched into an account of the rebel Gauls, he was quite sure that he’d have their undivided attention.

And he did at first. But he couldn’t help noticing that one of the smallest boys soon appeared to be nodding off to sleep. Another child was staring at him in a disconcertingly confused and unfocused fashion, occasionally giving her head a little shake. Perhaps he was going too fast - he supposed so many unfamiliar names and places could be confusing for the littler ones.

But then, just as he was reaching an exciting part of the story, the girl put up her hand.

“Yes Pierrette?” said Ninon, from the side of the room, where she was observing the lesson.

“Mam’zelle, I don’t feel w…” She didn’t finish, slumping off her stool in a dead faint. 

Her classmates skittered away from the stricken child in alarm, all except for the sleepy boy, who tried to get up, but staggered dizzily then collapsed himself. Ninon was quickly between them, feeling their foreheads.

“They’re both running high fevers,” she said, turning to Athos. “Run and get Dr Begnaud - the house next to the town hall. Go.” 

***

It wasn’t plague, thank god. That had been everyone’s first fear. But Dr Begnaud thought it that might be either the scarlet fever or the influenza and they were both quite dangerous enough when they ran rampant through a small town. Only time would tell if the children showed further symptoms. Frightened parents collected their children and took them home. The school would be closed for the time being and the pupils kept isolated until things were more certain.

Athos couldn’t go back to Paris. Dr Begnaud was quite clear that it would be against both his professional conscience and his patriotic duty to allow the musketeer to leave town and take whatever contagion had afflicted young Pierrette and Alfonse back to Paris, back to his regiment and most especially back to the palace where the queen was with child. 

Captain Treville was going to kill him. Indeed, with no quick way of getting word to the capital, there was every risk he’d be thought to have deserted - especially given the mental state he’d been in when he left. He could only hope his friends knew him better than that.

That wasn’t the thing worrying him the most right now though. That was Ninon, curled up on the bed, pale and shaking with fear for the young pupils and the welcoming community they belonged to, who had been her whole new world. He sat beside her and patted her shoulder, feeling useless.

*** 

The next day passed awkwardly and anxiously. While Athos couldn’t deny that every moment spent in Ninon’s company was something to treasure, it was hard to take real pleasure in anything when no good news came from the children’s sickbeds. And Dr Begnaud, making his rounds, reported that two more youngsters, Pierrette’s older brother and one of the local apprentice stonemasons, had already taken sick that morning.

The town was eerily quiet, as families hid indoors for fear that their neighbours would pass on the fever.

“It’s like waiting for execution,” said Ninon, and if anyone knew for certain what that felt like, they both did. “Only worse, because it’s the whole town.”

 _Have hope_ , he wanted to say, but it was harder when he couldn’t rush around taking action to save her. There were no musketeers riding to the rescue this time, no queen with the power to commute a death sentence - just him, and he was powerless against illness.

So instead what he said was, “We could put up a bookshelf.” And despite his lack of knowledge of home carpentry - or more likely because of it - it turned out to be an ingenious distraction for both of them. Hours later, after several mishaps and bruised thumbs, they ceremoniously placed _Botany of the New World_ on its new shelf and sighed with amused relief when the structure didn’t fall off the wall.

And so they made it through two more days, until every chore that could be found was done and the whole schoolhouse was spick and span.

The doctor looked more and more weary each day when he dropped in for a restoring glass of wine at the end of his rounds and brought them up to date on the latest news on his growing collection of fever patients. Pierrette, resilient little thing, was all of a sudden sitting up in bed and demanding that someone go to Blois and bring her back flavoured water ices to make her throat well. But others were having a worse time of it and Dr Begnaud still doubted they would make it through the outbreak without losses.

As they watched the sunset from the schoolhouse door later that evening, Athos held Ninon in his arms. She was alarmingly warm. He ran his fingers across her forehead.

“Do you feel well my dear?”

“Just tired, don’t fuss,” she said, but it came out as a hoarse croak.

***

By midnight she was tossing and turning feverishly on the bed, by turns sweating and shivering, breath hitching, teeth chattering. More than once her eyes blinked wide open, but it was obvious that she wasn’t really seeing Athos or the stuffily warm cottage room.

“I’m not a witch.”

“Shhh, love….” he soothed.

But perhaps that was entirely the wrong thing to say. “I won’t be silenced.”

“I know, I know.”

She twisted and writhed on the bed. “So hot... burning. They’re going to burn me alive.” 

After that her words turned to incomprehensible babble, interspersed with a soft keening sound, that was even more frightening.

“Stay with me, my heart,” pleaded Athos. She seemed to calm a little at his voice, so he kept on talking. He didn’t think he’d ever talked so much in his life. He didn’t know how he found enough words to keep going, but he was still talking as the dawn broke.

In the pale early light, Ninon suddenly seemed very still and waxen and he reached in sudden terror for the pulse at her neck to reassure himself. Her heart beat steadily, but his own was now thudding hard in his chest and in his ears and at the door. What? He tried to stand from the chair that he had pulled up to the bedside, but the pounding in his head overwhelmed him.

***

He was lying in bed. It was cool and comfortable and an improbably familiar warm voice was singing a lewd song in lullaby-like gentle tones somewhere nearby. That just wasn’t right. He opened his eyes, confirming that, yes, Aramis was sitting on the uncomfortable wooden chair at the side of the bed.

“Hello there, I thought you were going to sleep all day long.”

“Ni...?” His throat felt parched and sore. He remembered talking through the long night.

“She’s sleeping - see?” Aramis indicated the other end of the bed, and only then did Athos realise that her feet were right next to his ear. “The fever has passed. We attempted conversation earlier, but she had even less voice than you, so all I could do was reassure her that you weren’t really sick, just an idiot. She didn’t seem to need much convincing - it’s nice that she knows you so well.”

“But what are you doing here?”

“The captain was worried about you as soon as you weren’t back on time the day before yesterday, so he told us all he knew. And you should never, ever rely on Alain Brunet to keep your secrets,” said Aramis. “After that it was simply a case of arriving here in Coeurville and asking around for a musketeer. The old women we asked did seem quite taken with you.”

“You’re all here?”

“Well, d’Artagnan and Porthos rode straight back to Paris to let the captain know about the quarantine situation, but since I barged in here against Dr Begnaud’s wise advice - just in time to see you collapse, I might add - I’m afraid we’re all stuck for several more days. So I propose to do some fishing and I suggest that you and the delightful schoolma’am make the most of the time remaining.

***

So they did - although Aramis didn’t catch many fish, since the riverside was constantly full of noisily convalescing children, enjoying what already felt like holiday for most of them. But he considerately passed most the time out of doors anyway, leaving Athos and Ninon to recover together in private. And if he still walked in on them _in flagrante_ more than once, well then, he claimed, while throwing up his arms and pretending to be scandalised, that was clearly their own fault for being in the schoolroom rather than the bedroom.

Athos suspected he was in line for a horrendous amount of ribbing back in Paris, but he was too happy to care.

Three days later, the two musketeers departed for the city. During the ride back Athos realised he had left his small anatomy book behind on the perfectly imperfect new shelf that he had helped to build in the schoolroom cottage. He missed the pressure of it inside his jacket.

But perhaps it wasn’t the only heart he had left in Coeurville - and he knew Ninon would keep them both safe until he could visit again.


End file.
